CLINTON TOWNSHIP – It isn’t often a high school football game goes exactly as advertised, but that’s exactly what the North Hunterdon and Hillsborough teams delivered Friday night.

Two great teams with incredibly potent offenses and highly capable defenses connecting on a constant barrage of punches and counterpunches, and when it was all said and done, just as you’d expect in a game like this, it was the team that delivered the final blow that walked off the field with the victory.

Senior quarterback Matt Busher threw for 288 yards and three touchdowns, scoring twice more on the ground, but it was his connection with junior receiver Griffin Honthy on a 52-yard scoring heave with 11.4 seconds remaining in a tie game that was the knockout punch, as North Hunterdon stayed undefeated with a 38-31 topping of Hillsborough at Singley Field.

Knotted 31-31 in a game that featured 910 yards of offense from scrimmage, the Lions (7-0) stood strong following Jackson Parham’s clutch interception of Busher with 1:56 left in regulation, giving Hillsborough the ball at its own 26-yard line. North’s defense stopped the drive at its 38, as Connor McMahon broke up a fourth-down pass, turning the ball back to Busher, who had 31.3 seconds left and one timeout.

After completing a 10-yard gain to Connor McMahon, who smartly went out of bounds at the 48, Busher took the ensuing snap, scrambled away from a would-be sack, and heaved it about 25 yards, finding Honthy in space in the middle of the field. The junior grabbed the ball, turned, and streaked toward the right corner of the end zone, diving through the pylon to score with 11.4 remaining, before John Spies’ fifth extra point kick of the evening provided the final margin.

It was Honthy’s second scoring grab of the game, as he finished with four catches for 125 yards.

“It’s great that my quarterback trusts me,” he said. “I’m the young guy. The rest of the receivers are seniors. And the fact that he can look to me and just chuck the ball up to me is just amazing.”

“He’s just a nasty little gnat,” North Hunterdon coach Jared Mazzetta said of the 5-foot-8, 160-pound receiver. “He’s a little guy out there, but he finds holes, he’s lightning fast, and he gets open. And Busher finds him.”

It was also a Honthy-to-Busher connection that put North Hunterdon within striking distance in the final seconds of the third quarter. Tied 24-24, Busher piloted a 59-yard, 13-play drive, capping it on a 29-yard toss to Honthy, as the junior got open in the end zone, making a beautiful sliding catch on a 4th-and-7.

“That play is designed for the other side,” Honthy said. “I’m running the back side, and I saw him make eye contact with me because he saw that I slipped behind the safety, so he chucked the ball up and I thought it was going to be short, and I don’t think I ever ran so hard in my life.”

“One thing about this kid that’s just unreal is that if you throw a ball up, he’s going to track it down,” Busher said. “I throw balls up all the time – some better than others – but when I know I get a good one off, I know this kid’s going to go get it. He’s done it time in and time out.”

The back-and-forth momentum volleying got going right from the start Friday, as both teams came out firing. North Hunterdon, which was outgained 270-237 by the Raiders from scrimmage in the first half, struck first, taking the opening drive 79 yards, capped by a two-yard Busher scoring run.

Hillsborough cashed in on the ensuring possession and got a 28-yard field goal from JR Metallo, who also went 4-for-4 kicking extra points, and after forcing North to go 3-and-out on its next trip, the Raiders took a 10-7 lead on a 39-yard pass from Matt Moore to Parham, who finished with nine catches for 181 yards and two scores.

North Hunterdon tied it 10-10 with 7:03 left in the first half, getting a 20-yard field goal from Spies, and took the lead with 4:37 remaining on a 58-yard Busher-to-Jared McMahon scoring strike. Hillsborough retorted on its ensuring possession, tying it 17-17 on a 20-yard run from Charles Amankwaa, who finished with 99 yards on the ground, but North retook the advantage on its next drive, getting a one-yard Busher sneak into the end zone to make it 24-17 at the half.

The second half looked like it might be another slugfest, as Hillsborough began the third period capping a seven-play, 51-yard drive with a one-yard run by Moore, his only rushing attempt to go with a 17-for-37, 269-yard, two-touchdown passing performance. But the defenses stepped up and each quarterback threw interceptions on their first plays from scrimmage on the two drives that followed. Neither team would score again until Honthy’s TD catch just before the third quarter ended, giving North Hunterdon a 31-24 lead. Hillsborough tied it with 8:08 remaining on an 18-yard Parham reception, before Busher and Honthy’s heroics later in the period.

“They just kept making great plays,” Hillsborough coach Kevin Carty Jr. said. “They’re a good team, give them all the credit in the world. It was a game of momentum, back and forth. I thought whoever had it last was going to get it. It was exciting. We had a lot of guys making great plays, stepping up, but it’s a credit to them. I saw them making a bunch of plays, but I didn’t think they’d make that many against us. And after they made some early, I didn’t think they could keep it up, and they just did. Our guys fought to the very end and we made a lot of really good plays, too.”

“We knew it was going to be a four-quarter game,” Mazzetta said. “They’ve have athletes all over the place, they’re well-coached -- I give Coach Carty and his staff a heck of a lot of credit – and those kids battled just as hard as we did. It just happened that they gave us some time left on the clock, our defense stood up at the end, and when you make plays at the end of the game and have a lot of confidence in your quarterback to do that, you can take some risks. And it’s a great feeling because it’s been a long time for North Hunterdon.”

“It’s just all about our confidence,” Busher said. “No matter how much we’re down by or how much we’re up by, it’s just a confidence that we can do it and we can win this game and we can put points on the board. This is the most points we’ve scored all year and we did it against that defense, and that’s phenomenal for us. They’ve got playmakers everywhere, their skill-position players are ridiculous, and they’re a bunch of big boys. That’s a good defense and we put up 38 on them and I couldn’t be prouder. It’s all in the confidence.”

Hillsborough (4-3) becomes North Hunterdon’s second upper-division victim after the Lions’ dramatic victory over Bridgewater-Raritan two weeks ago. After sweeping through the Mid-State 37 Raritan Division with little resistance, North has proven itself against the conference’s big guns and will get a shot at a fellow undefeated club next weekend when it visits juggernaut Phillipsburg on Friday night, a team the Lions are competing with for the top seed in the North 2 Group IV playoffs.

“We’re very excited for the challenge next week,” Mazzetta said. “Our kids battled with them last year in a tough four-quarter game and they happened to get us. But we are playing with a lot of confidence and we’re ready for the challenge.”

Simeon Pincus can be reached at SPincus@GannettNJ.com. Follow him on Twitter @SimeonPincus and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SimeonPincusCN